WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
In Andalusia, where there is a Moorish strain in the people, the "black eye that mocks her coal-black veil" often glows with an extraordinary fascination from the white, moon-like faces of the women. Even more lambent are the glances of an Egyptian woman.
Miss Sara Jeanette Duncan, in "A Social Departure," speaks of the eyes of the women of Cairo—"conscious, tantalising eyes that shine lustrous between their blackened fringes, with a gilt wooden tube between and a good long strip of yashmak hanging from it, making a mystery of nose and lips and chin. They may all be beautiful—the presumption is against it, but the possibility is always there, and with crows' feet gathered too palpably above the yashmak, the eyes express the possibility in the most alluring manner—knowing very well that you are thinking of it, secure in the knowledge that you can't find out."
In his "Eastern Sketches" Thackeray writes of the Circassian beauties: "It is the Circassian blood, I suppose, to which the Turkish aristocracy that governs Egypt must be indebted for the fairness of their skin. Ibrahim Pasha, riding by in his barouche, looked like a bluff, jolly-faced English Dragoon officer, with a grey moustache and red cheeks, such as you might see on a field-day at Maidstone."
"The ladies whom we saw were equally fair, that
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